Displaying items by tag: Kemal Kilicdaroglu

Opinion polls predicted a win for opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu in the election. However, President Erdogan received 49.5% of the votes, making it a serious test of his twenty-year iron rule. Turkey’s economy has soaring inflation, a plummeting lira, and a cost-of-living crisis partly caused by Erdogan’s wacky economic policies. Also the shambolic response to February’s earthquake which killed 50,000 and displaced 1.5 million added to Erdogan’s many corruption and mishandling scandals. Could mild-mannered technocrat Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who is capable of uniting opposition parties of left and right, be what Turkish voters want in the run-off on 28 May? He has pledged to rule Turkey ‘with consultations and compromise’. A million Turkish expats living in the USA, Germany and Canada voted in the first round of the election: Kilicdaroglu has vowed to win the second round.

The march from Ankara to Istanbul, from 15 June to 9 July, is a response to spreading injustice and judicial system abuse by President Erdogan’s ruling party (AKP) after last year’s coup. The 450km march and rally by the opposition party CHP offered another way of engaging in politics, not filled with divisive and hate-filled rhetoric (the default mode of AKP). Not once did Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the CHP leader, and his supporters respond negatively to pro-government followers targeting them along the route. Instead, they responded with applause. Mr Kilicdaroglu said they had gathered to break down the ‘walls of fear’ erected by the ruling party.